


it is eerily quiet (the air is scarily silent)

by Smiley5494



Series: Author's Favourites [13]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Canonical Character Death, Don't Try This At Home, Electrocution, Graphic Description, Major Character Injury, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Temporary Character Death, Whump, does it count as major character death?, graphic descriptions of half-death, he should've had more adverse psychological effects than he did, i honestly cant believe danny didnt get ptsd from this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28002942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smiley5494/pseuds/Smiley5494
Summary: You should not have been there—you should not have accepted that dare. But you are, and you cannot change that, only live with the consequences of your actions.The portal had never lit up, why would you have suspected that it would?How could you have ever known that—once upon a time long ago—it worked?
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson
Series: Author's Favourites [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966441
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	it is eerily quiet (the air is scarily silent)

Sam convinces you to enter, and you step inside without a second thought. You don’t care that the portal is still connected to power—why should it matter? It doesn’t work anyway—and you don’t think to turn it off. Why would you? Your family is seen as crazy, insane, with their theories on ghosts and dreams of owning a working portal to the afterlife.

You step inside and your friends stay out, Tucker and Sam, cheerful and young—they are both full of life and full of potential. The voice in the back of your head is screaming, telling you how dangerous this idea is, how stupid you can be to enter an experimental device.

_How could you have ever known that—once upon a time long ago—it worked?_

You walk in—your suit tight and protective; your parents are scientists, you’re not a complete idiot with lab safety, you do have a vague idea of what you’re doing. The portal is slippery, shiny and metallic, and smooth in a way that only brand new things are. You slip slightly, barely keeping your balance and for a split second all you can feel is fear.

You don’t know why you agreed to the dare. You slip again, and this time your balance doesn’t help. The portal is dark—too dark for you to see what is in front of you (though, you are aware that it must only be the back of the portal itself, or perhaps the wall if it is hollow.) You fall, and your hand flings out trying to catch yourself. Your hand brushes the back of the portal, and even through the fabric of the gloves, you can tell it is made of the same smooth metal that the rest of the portal is made of.

You hear a click.

_There is a Before and there is an After. To get from the Before to the After there must be a catalyst, a trigger. The tiny click would play in your nightmares for months, for years, in the After. The tiny click, the tiny catalyst. In the nanoseconds that stretch forever between the Before and the After, you feel the button—a small raised bump that would be easily missed if the metal weren’t so smooth. It would be green, you think, green to go, red to stop; just the way it had always been, and always would be._

The portal lights up and you scream. It is the sort of scream that one makes as they are dying, and you are no exception; a final sound as your life is cut short. You scream as the pure power and force of a dimension opens up on top of you. Your muscles seize and spazz for every volt that runs through your body—and the portal contains millions. You scream until you can scream no more; then all you are is a conduit for the electricity arcing through your body. All you are is a conduit for the power and ectoplasm emanating from the Ghost Zone.

You are fourteen—school-aged, barely a teen. Your biggest problems should be tests and homework, not whether or not you are going to die in the activation of this portal. You should not have to worry about whether the electricity and ectoplasm altering the very makeup of your body would spread to your friends just outside.

The ectoplasm and electricity settle, retreating from your body, though your muscles still seize and you are dazed and weak—prone on the smooth metal of the floor, halfway in the portal, halfway out. You have one foot in the grave, both metaphorically and physically, and you can think of nothing else as you lie there—nothing except for how lucky you are to be alive.

_Are you even alive?—people don’t tend to survive that many volts arcing through their bodies, and while most people survive being struck by lightning, this is so much worse—more electricity, sustained over a longer period of time, all centred around you._

When you are aware enough to feel the pain that is the result of having a portal open on you, you can hear crying and voices. You sit up and the pain is suspiciously absent—it should not feel like a relief, it should not feel pleasant to walk after being electrocuted. You should be dead, not up and walking. Your fingers grip your wrist and you hunt for a pulse.

_It takes you far too long to find one—if you have half a pulse and half a breath are you truly alive?_

Sam is guilty, you can see it in her eyes when she looks at you, see it in the way her eyes are red and her cheeks suspiciously damp. Tucker’s are too, but his gaze is more horrified and scared than guilty. For a split second, you think about blaming them, but you look into their eyes and see the way they stare back and you can’t find it in yourself to do so. You think about how you were so certain that you would die when that horrifying click sounded, and you can feel only relief that you were the only one affected.

All three of you—Sam, Tucker, and you—are all fourteen. They should have been studying for the maths test, not hearing your dying screams. It would be a miracle if any of you can bear to see electricity again; if any of you could bear to even enter your house again.

Your hand goes through Sam’s shoulder and your heart stops. Tucker and Sam stare at you, and you stare back. Intangibility is not a human trait, and your eyes catch on the reflective glass in the door. Your hair is white, your eyes are green, you are wearing the inverse of what you had been only moments before.

This is not something any human can do, and you should be no exception. Your mind catches up to your fears and you realise with a sinking certainty, that your parents must not be so crazy after all. Then in a flash of white, you stare at your reflection again. You recognise the boy staring back at you, all the black-haired, blue-eyed, scrawniness of him. He is you, but the white-haired, green-eyed boy is _also_ you.

You are fourteen when you died; and yet, somehow, _somehow_ ; you are fourteen when you survived.

You are fourteen and you are neither dead nor alive. You are in between, half and half, with one foot in the grave and one out.

There will be no fixing this, and yet, even as you shake with the aftereffects of the electrocution, you know you do not want that—life is fragile and death is inescapable, inventible. Your time has come, and you have avoided it.

_You are only fourteen—you had so much to do, so much to see. Its a true shame, then, that your time was cut so short._


End file.
